What The Arctic Took And What It Kept

There is a quality unique to permafrost archaeology that separates it from almost every other form of excavation.

When you dig in temperate soils — the farmland of England, the river valleys of the Nile, the forests of North America — you dig through layers of decay.

The organic record is filtered: the durable survives, the fragile does not.

Stone and fired clay and metal are what remain.

Wood and leather and plant fiber are exceptions, preserved only in the most unusual conditions.